Drug info pledge from EU health chief

John Dalli

A call for new initiatives to complete Commission proposals that would liberalise controls on the provision of prescription drug information to patients have come courtesy of Europe's new Health Commissioner-designate today.

John Dalli, who is the Commissioner-designate for Health and Consumer Policy (SANCO) in President Jose Manuel Barroso's new Commission, has told ministers that the current draft directive needs to be reassessed in order to "bring more patients' perspective in the proposal."

His advice came in front of a three-hour hearing, held late last week by the European Parliament's Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI). He also noted that there may also be a need for a "harder demarcation between industry and advertising" - an issue that continues to stall the proposal within the Council of Ministers. Dalli's warnings were well-received by the MEPs, who were there to consider his nomination.

Right to information

According to Dalli, a member of Malta's National Party, "Patients have the right to have access to proper information on prescribed medicines. We have to reassess the proposal and put a better one on the table."

If successful in his nomination, Dalli would also be taking on responsibility for the European Medicines Agency, and in his written answers to the ENVI panel he says he is looking forward to the upcoming evaluation report on the Agency's functions "and, in this context, to evaluating whether there is scope for measures whereby we can optimize the bringing of new medicines to the market as quickly as possible."

Less enthusiastic

However it wasn't all good news for Dalli last week, who learned that MEPs were less enthusiastic about his call for the pharmaceutical legislation package to be "unbundled" to allow its non-controversial aspects - initiatives to tackle counterfeit medicines and improve pharmacovigilence - to proceed speedily.

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